Friday, December 21, 2007

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

nuum talk

* dissensus thread started by Gabba Flamenco Crossover on dubstep's migration into the free party scene where its sloth and coldness mesh perfectly with the Ketamine-induced Katatonia that's long defined the squat-rave vibe, When the pharmasonic synergy kicks in and producers from that scene start to propel dubstep deep into the K-hole, will the genre's metabolism screw right down to... quarter-step?

* bassline: another piece by Hattie Collins, this time for RWD and letting the scene itself--deejays, producers, promoters, even vocalists--tell their own story. plus K-punk on bassline's freakadelic fairground aesthetic (and re. erm, nongenitality,yeah, totally, the amorousness of bassline is utterly fantastical and hyper-real; nothing to do with real-world between-sheets carnality, more luvdup than love action.)

* Martin Clark convenes a clutch of movers and shakers in the London scene to assess the significance of funky house's ever-rising popularity in the capital; whether it is indeed a major "pendulu(nuu)m swing". Martin is surely right to argue that the most exciting phases are those periods of semantic indeterminacy before anyone can settle on a genre name, everything's still in flux, the sound has yet to arrive at itself. But the difference between this moment and grime's wot-u-call-it phase in 2003 was that then there was a very obviously new and highly significant entity that was simultaneously demanding to be called something and evading the nomenclative fix. Here it's much less clear if there's even an "it" that's sufficiently defined/different to require a "wot". "Funky" melts into other genres at every edge without establishing much sense of itself as a demarcated terrain of sound. And as Martin notes at a couple of points, "funky" isn't yet a great leap forward, or even sideways, musically; the sonic paradigm shift has yet to reveal itself. Lots of interesting points made during the discussion (e.g. the bit on reloads in grime--a classic example of going into the Zone of Fruitless Intensification, something that was incredibly exciting--the rewind--getting overdone to the point where there's a complete disruption of any flow) but at the end of reading it I felt as confused as its participants appeared to be!

"...In the capital funky house is on the march into grime's London fanbase. Diametrically opposite to grime [feminine, escapist, "mature raver," warm, anodyne, danceable, tracky, DJ-focused, shoes/shirts versus masculine, reflectist, "yout," hard, raw, watchable, MC-focused, hoods/trainers], funky house shows every sign of becoming UK garage part 2. While the sound is fairly generic funky house now, the sound of every wine bar as it has been for over a decade, urban London has now got its hands on the genre. History has proven that when they do, it gets claimed for their own and quickly mutated."

That's the glass half-full view. The other outlook would be to see this latest return to 'dancing/4X4/girl-friendly/'adult hardcore'/dressing smart' not as a drastic swing/start-of-something-new a la 1997 and speed garridge, but as the wheel turning one complete revolution... and coming to a dead stop. Back to where 'we' started. Or before we started, even: pre-rave, pre-acieeed. The words 'house' and 'funky' have a lameness to them, a stale familiarity. They suggest a modesty of ambition, of demand.

seeing Young Marble Giants play together for the first time in 20-plus at Hay

participating in the world won't listen by Phil Collins

meeting Malcolm McLaren after his British Consulate sponsored speech ("never trust a policeman... you must fail, fail brilliantly... etc") to UK record industry folk in NYC on their way to South By South West

^^^^^^^^^^^

* should probably give it another chance but offput by for the first time suddenly seeing why AC sometimes get compared to XTC...

* * * * S'nice. Pleasant. Listenable, in a Band of Holy Joy dubstrumental meets Dammers circa In the Studio kinda way. But it's like some kind of memo went around the international hipsterati: Pram, massively relevant again. I mean, it's not like this decade's output is so vastly superior to the 93-96releases. If anything, the reverse.

* * * * *by the end of it though I was starting to think it's high time for a thorough-going critique of Bourdieu

Friday, December 07, 2007

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Dirty North

Martin Clark and Alex Sushon separately chide me for not knowing that "showa" has been grime slang for a good few years now. Apparently it originally comes from an infamous Jamaican gang who like to boast about showering their enemies with bullets. (And there was I half-hoping "showa" had something to do with precipitation, or personal cleanliness, or strong water pressure). So "showa", it's a twist on "killer", as in "that tune's killer".

Listening to all these darkbass-roiling 4/4 tracks with MC-ing on, it's a bit like a rewind to the summer of 2002, being in London and hearing outfits like Black Ops and Horra Squad on the pirates. There's that same odd feeling of being simultaneously repelled and rapt, appalled and attracted. The rapping, fairly crappy; lyrics ugly with misogny and carnographic doggerel; beats thin and cheap, murda muzak. That summer it wasn't at all clear whether this was the absolute nadir of UKG (i.e. So Solid's afterbirth) or the start of Something New. As it turned out, all that proto-grime submusic turned out to be the No Limit to Dizzee/Wiley/etc's Cash Money. The shit out of which greatness grew.

Meanwhile, the other strand of bassline--the poptastic R&B hyperdiva strand, now that is actually the drastic pendulum swing from yang to yin, testosterone to oestrogen, that I had always imagined would happen in reaction to grime, except it took so long to happen I gave up on it and just forgot. But here it is: the return to dance energy, groove, amorous vibes, "girls like this/this one's for the ladies massive/feminine pressure". I'd imagined it would happen as a some kind of resurgence of 2step. Well, on the rhythmic substructure level bassline is 4/4, but its whole upper chassis pretty much is 2step. Bassline of the ‘Heartbroken’/’Smile’/’Bed’/’Never Rush’/’Why Can’t I Find Love’ stripe is pure ‘Flowers’/’Destiny’/’My Desire’/’Sorry’. And as much as it's called "bassline", it's got that extreme treble thing that 2step had, that fizzy ultrabrite sound.

Then there's MC Murkz, the guy who did "Night Showa". Check out his tune "Manny Man"--he's from Manchester (lyrical references to Gunchester)--and his mixtape Do the Maths Vol 1via Smugpolice

You know what it is, all this MCs-over-4/4, bassline rap... It's the Dirty North. Like with rap starting in New York, grime started in London. But it diffused itself into the provinces, then mutated. The results sound backward to the originators, just like crunk and other Dirty South regional sounds seemed retarded and crude to rap custodians. But...

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

hauntological vibes in the area!

1/ Via Sit Down Man, a link to a blog that has an amazing docu-poem depiction ofthe building of the BBC Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush,soundtracked marvelously by our friends in the Radiophonic Workshop

2/ Now, when I first saw this place I thought they'd got to be either ripping off, or ripping the piss out of, Ghostbox.

But apparently the chap behind The Blank Workshop, Ian Hodgson, came up with the Belbury-like idea of Clinkskell (tourist board here) independently of and in parallel with Jules et Jim. And Ghostbox are not only aware, they approve and appreciate.

The music by “Gecophonic Productions” aka Moon Wiring Club, is actually excellent: midway between the "proper tunes"/discernible style pasticherie of Belbury Poly/Advisory Circle and the disintegrated oneiroscapes of The Focus Group and Eric Zann.

but on one of the two Warbus Tourbus mixes Smugpolice links to, there's a track called "Showa Riddim"

and then on the Jamie Duggan Flavas November 2007 mixcd (very first bassline product i've mailordered; hmmm they don't go a bundle on presentation, these bassline guys, cd-r plus the most desultorily designed of cd inserts!; good mix though) the last track is "Night Showaa" by Murkz (basically a grime MC rapping over Coki & Benga's celebrated fastdubstep riddim "Nite"--'doublestep' perhaps, ie. opposite of half-step).

so it's for real then! "showa"... i wonder what the etymology of that is then?